I Would Find a Girl Walking (3 page)

Eventually Paul Crow would tell me, with some degree of caution and hesitation, and even a tinge of embarrassment, that he didn’t know if Stano truly trusted me or if it was all part of his facade. He pointed out that where Stano had a very small social circle, I had a large network that stretched throughout several states, and even internationally. Stano craved that sort of popularity for himself. “Tell Kathy I like her very much. And I think she’s beautiful too. She is the ‘old fashion type.’ That is what I like in a girl Paul. I would be very honored to have her as my girlfriend if I was out,” Stano wrote to Paul on January 28, 1986.

“You’re a pretty lady, Kathy,” said my high school friend, “and I hate to say this but you probably became like a kind of Farrah Fawcett poster on his wall.” Fawcett was the “it girl” back then. I cringed at the thought.

I don’t know if he honestly took a liking to me or if it was all pretense, but I’m sure he welcomed any diversion from the prison routine, especially having a female visitor. I don’t even want to imagine what he told other inmates about me when he got back to his cell, but I’m certain it enhanced his self-image as a macho guy. He was only too happy to comply with anything that improved his own perception of virility. Even though facing the electric chair, he had lost none of his illusions that women were somehow attracted to him, despite also claiming that “I kind of look over the girls, because of my weight problem I have. If they snicker at me, forget it. But, if they take me for what I am, that’s a different story. Besides, I am not what the girls call a hunk. I am just an overweight nobody.”
²

I don’t know that I was able to penetrate his wall. He was not at all willing to talk about some of the crimes; some of the others he was only too ready to revisit in exact detail. Some, he said, were hard to remember, while others he claimed to have blocked out. Early in our discussions, he claimed innocence of one of the murders, saying he was in jail at the time. Prodding him for more details in some of the cases disturbed him, causing him sleepless nights on his hard prison bunk, he said.

But he also told me about the women he had killed.

He talked to me about what was believed to be his first murderous rage, in Gainesville, in 1973. He picked up two young girls who were hitchhiking. Something in the ensuing conversation convinced him they were lesbians. Comments about his manhood, his clothes, or his weight provoked him to a boiling rage, and he lashed out and killed the girls as they drove along in his car.

This was frequently his pattern. Sometimes it was his fist. More often, it was a knife. As he drove, he would slash his victims again and again. Sometimes he shot them, usually in the temple, with a .22 caliber weapon he claimed to have borrowed from a friend.

I found it particularly unsettling because he considered these young women as no more than prey. He would “find a girl walking,” stalk her, take her, and ultimately destroy her. His lack of remorse was a characteristic he shared with other serial killers such as Ted Bundy,
³
John Wayne Gacy, and Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer.

Like Ted Bundy, Stano had gone from “organized” to “disorganized” in his method of operation. When a member of the Green River Killer Task Force called Paul Crow to consult with him about finding their killer, Crow told him, “Find a victim that survived the attack. You’re assuming he killed everyone who got in the truck. You have to have eyes and ears in the community.”

The death penalty seemed a fitting sentence or punishment for someone who had cold-bloodedly and coldheartedly taken the lives of others, but I couldn’t witness Gerald Stano’s final moments in the electric chair.

Initially, I had applied to be a witness to his execution, and because our newspaper had covered his crimes heavily, we were granted a spot on the list. But from the onset, Stano had told me he didn’t want me there.

A week or so before it was scheduled, I knew I couldn’t go, that it was not an image that I wanted saved forever in the hard drive of my brain. So I chose not to attend.

I felt a sense of sadness because a human life had been taken and because I had developed some sort of rapport with a person who was a separate entity from the “serial killer.” On the other hand, that person was truly despicable. Who was he to play God and decide that these girls shouldn’t live anymore because they didn’t meet his standards or he felt they had insulted him?

Unfortunately, for the families left behind, there will never be an end to their pain and suffering or that deep sense of loss.

My childhood was the usual. If I wanted to buy something, I had to have a good reason. If I wanted to talk to my father, I would cringe at the sight of him. I was afraid of him, and to this day, I still am afraid of him. . . . My mother would take charge of us [Gerald and his adopted brother Arthur
⁴
] during the week, and tell him [Dad] what we did wrong on the phone. When he got home, he would march us both into the bathroom and beat us with a leather razor strap. When I cracked up the family car, he came after me with a straight edge razor opened up. When I had accidents with my cars, he would always go into a rage, and say “ Why couldn’t you have been killed?”

—Gerald Stano to Kathy Kelly, August 15, 1985

 

 

 

 

O
n September 12, 1951, in Schenectady, New York, a baby was born, the fifth child to be delivered to a most reluctant of mothers. Two of her previous attempts at motherhood failed miserably. One baby was stillborn. The other, in layman’s terms, was a “blue baby.”

But this child, a boy, had a normal birth, though he had no way of knowing that the sterile conditions of the hospital would be his first and last taste of cleanliness for a while, at least for seven months. Once at home, he was listless and cranky, often from hunger. He wasn’t fed much or regularly, and his development, physical and emotional, began to suffer early on.

The baby missed the bonding that is crucial to an infant at an early age, the cuddling that’s such a vital expression of a mother’s love. Clearly, he was just another mouth to feed, a whiny baby to be barely tolerated at best. Dirty diapers went unchanged, and clothes remained unwashed for days.

Eventually, the New York State Welfare Department stepped in. “Extreme neglect” was the term used in the routine paperwork of the welfare system, but it did little to describe the trauma already inflicted on the infant. He met the same fate as the siblings who had survived before him. He was taken away from his mother.

Within a month, welfare authorities had found a set of prospective adoptive parents, Eugene and Norma Stano, a couple in their thirties. The Stanos had wanted a child desperately and were eager to take this pitiful little creature into their home and hearts.

The couple showered him with love, trying to overcome the neglect and harshness of his early infancy. He wasn’t a warm, cuddly child, but the couple hoped that in time he would respond to their care and concern, to their caresses and affectionate words.

At the end of the first six months, as required by New York State law, the Stanos allowed the child, whom they named Gerald Eugene Stano, to be examined by a team comprised of a psychiatric social worker, a nurse, a physician, a psychologist, and a psychiatrist. It was their job to chart the child’s development, to see if he was responding to his new surroundings, to find out if the nurturing of two loving parents had begun to block out the first wretched months of life. When the report came back, the Stanos were devastated. Gerald was considered “unadoptable” in the jargon of the welfare workers. That meant he would have to be returned to the custody of the state, probably to end up in some home for disturbed children, sentenced yet again to a life absent of a warm, caring family.

Norma Stano didn’t take the news calmly. This woman, herself a trained nurse, had a stake in the baby’s future and she intended to protect it. Stoically, she appealed for help from the social worker assigned to the case and one of the staff psychologists. She did everything she could to convince these professionals that Gerald’s place was with the Stanos, that they could give him the second chance in life he deserved.

However, at no time did Norma Stano see the psychiatrist’s report on why her adopted son shouldn’t stay with his new family. She fought back on instinct alone, not wanting to give up on this tiny little human being who seemed so forlorn.

Finally, her wishes prevailed, and welfare workers reluctantly approved the adoption. At last, little Gerald was a permanent part of a family.

He proved a tough child to love. Aloof and withdrawn, he never showed affection toward the couple. He continued to exhibit some of the disturbing traits that had begun in his infancy, such as eating his own feces. He walked early on but was clumsy, uncoordinated. He bumped into walls, tumbling down the stairs several times. In early childhood, he suffered several head injuries from his rambunctious ramblings. By the time he was three, he had suffered high fevers of up to 105 degrees on several occasions.

As a child, Gerald was slow to talk, not really beginning to communicate well until he was about two. But he was extremely neat even as a toddler, despite his penchant for eating feces, insisting his toys be a kept a certain way, a preoccupation with having every thing in its proper place. If Norma Stano moved an end table across the room, Gerald noticed it right away. Screaming and crying, he would insist it be returned to its original position.

Gerald finally started primary school, harboring a secret from his classmates. He still wet the bed at night. Concerned, the Stanos took him to see a physician, who could find no physical cause for the bed-wetting. The child’s reserved, unfriendly nature began to cause him problems in school.

As early as kindergarten and first grade, Gerald earned the reputation of being a bully, shoving smaller children around, taunting them. Principals and teachers called Gerald’s parents in repeatedly for conferences, vaguely implying that something seemed to be “wrong” with the child.

If Gerald seemed sullen and withdrawn, the Stanos soon learned another dark side to their son. He was dishonest. First, it was little things like lying, but then they began to notice things missing from around the house. Their other adopted son, Arthur, claimed Gerald had stolen his toys, or money for ice cream or a movie. Once, he even stole something at school.

For Gerald, school was a constant torment. He couldn’t seem to relate to his classmates and found the challenges of the academic world too much. His parents arranged for intensive tutoring, but the best Gerald could manage were Cs and Ds. The only subject he really enjoyed was music, and he would be enthralled for hours at a time listening to the radio or to records.

Years later, he would recall under hypnosis how he would murder a neighbor’s chickens. A sixth or seventh grader at the time, he would pick up a fluffy little chick, then twist its neck sharply, watching and listening with glee as its tiny little chirping noises became more and more faint.

By the time he reached junior high, Gerald’s childish pranks of stealing from fellow students and his family had begun to take a more serious turn. In Westchester County, New York, he turned in false fire alarms on several occasions, enjoying the power he felt when a hurriedly spoken message to the fire department would send trucks out, sirens screaming, on some bogus calls.

His penchant for trouble became more aggressive. From a vantage point atop a highway overpass, he once tossed a large rock down on a car traveling below. Luckily, nobody was hurt, but the windshield of the auto was smashed. Gerald was caught, and Westchester County juvenile authorities told the Stanos that after the fire alarms and the rock throwing, a third brush with the law would have serious consequences for Gerald. He would be adjudicated a delinquent and sentenced to a state reformatory.

Alarmed, the Stanos decided to take immediate action. They thought taking Gerald out of the school atmosphere and getting him away from Schenectady might help, so they enrolled him in the Hargrave Military Academy, in Virginia. The structured discipline of the academy might be just what was needed to change Gerald from a youthful prankster into a purposeful young man. But it was not to be. At Hargrave, he quickly earned the reputation of a troublemaker. He borrowed large sums of money from other cadets and then refused to pay them back. The former bully became an easy target for abuse. He was the butt of jokes about his glasses and his weight. He was easily intimidated, and the other cadets sensed it and derived great pleasure from scaring him with menacing threats.

For the Stanos, this attempt at helping Gerald get straightened out was another failure. They withdrew him from the military school and sent him to Ormond Beach, Florida, where Norma Stano’s parents lived. He attended junior high there for a time. Mrs. Stano’s parents were clearly uneasy with their grandson being in the house. By the time the Stanos came to get Gerald to return up north, the older couple had installed locks on their bedroom doors.

The Stanos took Gerald back to Ambler, Pennsylvania, where they had moved. Perhaps a fourth change of scenery and friends would help their troubled son. But at Shady Grove School, Gerald’s bad habits surfaced quickly. He was brought up before the principal for handing out money to some of the male students. It seemed Gerald had stolen money from his father’s wallet and then gave it to members of the track team, bribing them to run behind him so he could finish first in competitive races. He frequently skipped school and managed to get in some kind of trouble while he was in class.

Gerald’s awkward streak was having an effect on the entire family. Arthur, a popular student with good grades in school, ran away from home after Gerald came back from Florida, upset at the divisive effect the other boy’s behavior was having on the family.